The Vengeance Factor

Riker's plan to sleep his way around the galaxy finally gets him into trouble

Our away team beams down into a dishevelled set lit in an eerie colour. Clearly something terrible has happened, because not only does this place look like a teenager's bedroom but they lit it in green. It's not a welcoming colour for illumination. It seems that this Federation outpost was attacked by the Gatherers, an outcast clan of Acamarians.

Picard decides to indulge in some diplomacy. So he invites Marouk, the sovereign of Acamar, and her servant Yuta, to come and chat with the space pirates. But all is not as it seems! Yuta is an ancient bioweapon intent on killing every living member of a rival clan, starting with an old man milling about the Gatherer encampment.

Anyway, Riker tries it on with Yuta, but is frustrated by her subservience and their date ends in disappointment, while Data and Dr Crusher investigate the mysterious death among the Gatherers. They discover Yuta's secret and Riker dramatically beams down to confront her in a melodramatic climax that culminates in Riker disintegrating Yuta with his phaser.

Now that's what I call a bad break up!

Words

This was the last episode to air in the 1980s unless you count 1990 as a year in the eighties - which you really ought to, by the way, but let's not go down that rabbit hole.

The whole story rests upon setting up the bloody history of the Acamarians, specifically the feud between the Tralesta clan and the Lornak clan. This is an efficient piece of writing; the existence of the clans is easily filled in without it seeming like clunky exposition, and the mystery of what is going on can unfold at a comfortable pace.

Another episode where Data’s job is basically a glorified search engine

It's not the most thrilling of adventures, but it's a well-constructed mystery and it plays out in a satisfying fashion. The political framework of the opening acts successfully misdirects us from what's really going on, and allows the reveal at the end of the second Act - when Yuta makes the first kill - to land with force.

'Microvirus' is a pivotal word in the script. 'Virus' would have done the same job, but 'microvirus' makes it sound more sci-fi, and works well to set it up as a bioweapon - which of course, it is. Pragmatically, I'm not really convinced it would be possible to make a virus that killed as rapidly as this one, but dramatically it works for the needs of this story very well.

Acting Roles

This is a Riker episode first and foremost, and Jonathan Frakes laps it up. There's actually a good amount of things for the rest of the cast to do - except for Marina Sirtis' Troi, who is shamefully used as set dressing. Even Wil Wheaton's Wesley Crusher has more to do. However, it's also heavy on the guest stars.

Lisa Wilcox has the most fun role as Yuta, playing simultaneously as subservient and harmless on the one hand, and as malevolent and murderous on the other. She's having a blast with it! It's not the best performance, but it works well, especially when she's playing off Frakes. You might have seen her in some of the later Nightmare on Elm Street movies as Alice, a role she had only just finished filming before appearing in this episode of TNG.

Joey Aresco's Brull is hammy and over-the-top. I find it hard to enjoy. He's a perennial bit player, with a huge list of single episode credits, although this was his first sci-fi show. Later, he did an episode of MacGyver, the revived Dark Skies, Dark Angel, The Dead Zone, Stargate SG-1, and The Flash.

Stephen Lee's Chorgon isn't much better. He was also in Dark Angel, incidentally, and we'll see Lee again as a bartender in season six.

However, I very much enjoy Nancy Parson's performance as the sovereign Marouk, which is much more assured and confident than the rest of the guest stars. If you're of a certain age, you might recognise her as the coach in the Porky's movies.

But my favourite bit part of the episode is Marc Lawrence's Volnoth. Not only is he brilliantly imagined by the make-up and wardrobe team, but he is having such fun being killed. It's a tiny role, but wonderfully delivered. Lawrence also appears as a gangster in the DS9 episode "Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang".

Fans sometimes complain about Picard doing nothing in the final showdown with Yuta. Director Timothy Bond, however, has explained that because of the need to composite the shots of her being disintegrated, he needed Picard to sit still in this scene. Honestly, I don't find this a particularly egregious issue. Certainly less problematic than my wife's objection, that they could have just beamed Yuta to the brig. But then, it's much more dramatic for Riker to disintegrate his ex-girlfriend, don't you think…?

Models, Make-up, and Mattes

Our opening shot is a rental matte painting. This one was originally from the classic 1956 sci-fi movie Forbidden Planet, which makes it the oldest matte in TNG!

Michael Okuda had seen it in a catalog and had been extremely keen to find a way to get it into an episode, and for this one he finally persuaded production designer Richard James to sign for the rental fee.

Elkanah J. Burns's make-up as Temarek is brilliant! The team did a great job with him, and the Acamarians for the most part are nicely ragged. You can almost smell them - as indeed Worf jokes after the battle at the start of Act two. The make-up team do brilliant work with all the little scars and adornments - they really are on top form here!

Oh, and let's welcome back the Mondor from "Samaritan Snare" this time playing the Gatherer ship. It'll be back four more times before TNG is over. There's not much use of studio miniatures this time around, with most of the production team's efforts being poured into a wide variety of sets. Bond, the director, was especially proud of this one used in the opening.

He remarked of the show:

It was fun to do. The dialogue was of little consequence, and I think some of it was even cut. There's a tendency in television to say, 'I'm opening the door now.' Well just open the door. It's not a radio show. So we were able to make that quite visual and the art department came up with this bizarre painted backdrop. They lit it with green light and there was smoke. That show also featured the best set I've ever had. We only had it up for two days and it was such a shame to tear it down.

That's the trouble with this kind of episode: you make such great spaces, but they only ever exist for a matter of days.